By Rachel Puryear
Nowadays, people are increasingly appreciating the importance of setting boundaries with other people. Learning what boundaries work well for us, as well as practicing putting them into place effectively, is an important life lesson for everyone.
Of course, there are different types of boundaries: Physical boundaries include who we allow to touch us, and how. Time boundaries include how much time we’re willing to give to others, and for what purposes. Privacy boundaries include what personal information we’re willing to share with others. Behavioral boundaries include how we allow others to treat us. Work boundaries include how much we separate our personal and professional lives.
But there’s another kind of boundaries, and it may be more overlooked than many other types of boundaries – that is, emotional boundaries.
So, what are emotional boundaries?
Taking Responsibility for Feelings Versus Expecting Others To
Taking responsibility for one’s own feelings is a sign of good emotional boundaries, as well as respect for others’ emotional boundaries, too. This includes doing one’s own work at self-exploration, making efforts at communicating, and taking steps to learn friendship and relationship skills – as opposed to assuming that the other person will accept a one-sided relationship constantly doing all that emotional effort without much reciprocation.
Shared Emotional Labor
In any kind of intimate relationship – friendship, romantic, familial, or otherwise – expecting each person to reasonably share the emotional labor involved is a sign of good emotional boundaries.
This includes things like each side is willing to talk about problems and disagreements in a civil manner, each side listens and give support to the other where needed, each side normally exercises a degree of emotional control appropriate for an adult, each side is honest and forthcoming with the other, each side expresses their needs and thoughts openly, each side exercises some self-awareness as a normal part of growth, and so forth.
Self-Revealing Gradually and Mutually
In getting to know one another, it’s essential to share information about ourselves. It’s also important to listen while the other person shares information about themselves, too.
At the same time, that information should be shared gradually – and building up towards sharing the more personal stuff. Emotional boundaries include developing a good sense of whom to share more personal information with, and when.
Autonomy and Intimacy
People often conflate increasing intimacy with a loss of autonomy. There are certainly understandable reasons why people do this – perhaps it’s a tendency to lose themselves when they get attached to others, or have been in a friendship or relationship before with someone who was controlling.
However, where two people each having healthy emotional boundaries are paired together, they then have the greatest chance at achieving both intimacy together, as well as maintaining their own autonomy.
Earning Trust
In a healthy relationship, trust is earned with time and demonstrated mutual integrity. Expecting someone’s trust immediately is a sign of poor emotional boundaries – and people who expect unquestioned trust right away tend to be exactly the kind of people one should not trust.
As far as giving one’s trust, people can fall into extremes on both ends – some people trust too readily for their own good, even overlooking red flags or simply signs of incompatibility early in a relationship, because they have such strong feelings; while others may withhold their trust for quite a long time – maybe always – and likely push people away as a result. People on each extreme may have their reasons, but it nonetheless can make setting emotional boundaries difficult.
Mutual Respect
Treating one another with basic mutual respect in any relationship should be a given. However, that’s not the case for everyone – and a lack of such mutual respect is a pretty good indicator in itself of poor emotional boundaries, probably for both parties.
Empathic People and Emotional Boundaries
It would be tempting to go with the cliché and assume that empathic people have poor emotional boundaries across the board, and that we’re destined to absorb the emotions of others constantly – unless we decide to live life as hermits.
Fortunately, it’s actually not all doom and gloom for us. In fact, the enhanced self-awareness and ability to process things deeply that comes naturally for most empathic/HSP folks also gives us big advantages in learning how to develop good emotional boundaries.
At the same time, our high levels of empathy and understanding of others’ needs and feelings can lead us to be givers, including sometimes to people we maybe shouldn’t give as much to, and who maybe don’t reciprocate our kindness and care. So for that reason, we need to learn good judgment through life experience as to who should be in our lives, and who shouldn’t be.
That’s just a part of life as being who we are. And even though we will have to sometimes leave behind some people who end up not sharing our loving and generous spirit, or who even have nefarious intentions, we can still ultimately build loving and supportive relationships and friendships and social networks. But the upside is, we are probably more able than anyone else to also attract others like ourselves – the ones who will usually appreciate us the most, and tend to give us the most back in return. This tends to happen far more frequently when we stop trying to fit other people’s molds, and be ourselves, and expect to attract others also on that same wavelength.
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